So that settles that little question. …Oh, only almost. We can be reasonably sure that there is exactly one touched one among the group, although it could also be that there’s more but only one is of particular interest to Eldor. Lilith is the primary choice given that she was singled out in Silas’ evidence (in BAB 100 and 101) and we’ve seen Eldor spying on her individually (in BAB 087), but some people have mentioned that it might be Viviana, based on her experience in the forest.

@ Chortos-2:
The other major point in favor of Viviana is her similar appearance to San de Vertis, who has been identified as a Touched One and has a thus-far-unnamed sister. I’m sure the ambiguity was kept on purpose. Another possibility: Both Lilith and Viviana are “Touched,” but Kali and Eldor aren’t aware of this. Or maybe Novil’s messing with us, and it’s actually Sandril. 😉

I’m interested to learn that there are “many” elves who oppose Eldor and his project. I’m also intrigued by the mention of Eldor’s father, who may be (a) dead, (b) distant, or (c) blind. In any case, it seems that the father is some kind of important, influential, or memorable figure to the elves.

The fantasy character poll is interesting, because I’m starting my first ever D&D campaign next week. I watched the rest of the party this week. I don’t really get it yet, so a party member is making me a few characters. I dunno what I’ll choose yet; I may just want to have a physical attacker, since everyone else can use magic.

Given the number of incidents where Isaac is mentioned in conjunction with “time” spells, it makes me wonder if he is Eldor’s father. So Isaac disappears behind the Mythal, settles down with an elvish (or a human) hottie (depending on whether Isaac is a human or an elf, and produces Eldor (who may be half and half). So the question is, is Eldor actually 55, or is it the effect of time dilation (like when a person is traveling close to the speed of light) where time slows down for that individual?

@ Tim:
How long were they in the hiding? And now Eldor tries to drag their whole race back into the open for whatever reason he thought important enough to justify his actions. Of course he has opposition. And quite powerfull one if the once who created the barrier are still alive. Eldor doesn’t seem like someone in power among the elves or a “big bad” of the story. More like a desperate scientist with only his lab and a bunch of assistants at his disposal(and whatever he can get from a position of royal advisor of one of human kingdoms without drawing too much suspicion that he’s going outside).

@ Tim:
How long were they in the hiding? And now Eldor tries to drag their whole race back into the open for whatever reason he thought important enough to justify his actions. Of course he has opposition. And quite powerfull one if the once who created the barrier are still alive. Eldor doesn’t seem like someone in power among the elves or a “big bad” of the story. More like a desperate scientist with only his lab and a bunch of assistants at his disposal(and whatever he can get from a position of royal advisor of one of human kingdoms without drawing too much suspicion that he’s going outside).

@ Lucario:
With some years of D&D experience let me tell you: You might want to play a physical damagedealer as a first character – I’d recommend a fighter, as they tend to have the least amount of mechanics you need to know and have in mind in a given situation. This leaves you much more time to concentrate on the world, the party and the roleplay.
The more spells your character can cast the more spells you need to have (at least vague) knowledge of to be able to react as best as possible.

In the German version it’s the female word for “the touched one” so Sandril is out.

How’d you determine that?

My German is not great, but I seem to recall that the gender of the article (the feminine die, in this case) is not a reliable indication of the biological gender of the subject (e.g. das Mädchen is neuter rather than feminine). I wasn’t familiar with the word “behrürte,” so without a transcript I wasn’t able to tell whether it was a noun (capitalized) or an adjective (lowercase) describing an unstated noun. Were it a noun, I would have expected to see the suffix -in to indicate the subject was female; were it an adjective, the ending -e doesn’t give us any indication of gender as I believe this is the nominative case.

@ Tim:
Well… nobody ever told us Germans we’d speak a intuitive language 😉
First of all, while you’re right, there are feminine words with neutral grammatical gender, but, at least considering persons, there is no case where the grammatical gender is feminine but the real gender is not (at least none I’d know of). So the “die” makes it clear it has to be a woman – otherwise it’d be “der Berührte”.
It has to be a nominalized adjective, and for those the feminine form mostly does not differ from the masculine form, both ending in ‘-e’. Furthermore many feminine substantives have nonregular suffixes, for example “die Frau” (the woman) does not exactly end in ‘-in’, but is definetly grammatical feminine – as to see from the article.
All in all: While there are some cases where the grammatical gender differs from the biological gender, there is (afaik) no case where it includes masculine to feminine (or the other way around). It allways is just about neutral to one of the other.

@ Alive:
Or he might have green portal right above this one at the ceiling or whatever else he can get creative with. Connecting to the thing that is influencing Vivi is a pretty stupid decision to get rid of a single witness. Even a portal with exit point chosen by RNG seems much better… and merciful.

@ Uhl:
His? You sure about that? We can’t be even half sure about the info that they recieved. And students are among the most frequent participants in various riots and rebellions. He just doesn’t seem like much of a villian to me(or mybe I don’t want him to turn up as a villian to some degree).

@ MHW:
Great info; thanks for the explanation! I had neglected the possibility of a female noun lacking the -in suffix, but die Frau is an important example I should have known. Also, I have now learned the term “nominalized adjective.” Languages are fun!

@ Uhl:
His? You sure about that? We can’t be even half sure about the info that they recieved. And students are among the most frequent participants in various riots and rebellions. He just doesn’t seem like much of a villian to me(or mybe I don’t want him to turn up as a villian to some degree).

These who still want to belief that Eldor is a misunderstood nice and good guy: He killed at least two men just because they where together with a girl he wanted to kill because he’d like San to attack some cult. That’s there colleteral deaths just to manipulate ohne of bis “pet wizards”.

To motivate the other one (Lilith), he has not only kidnapped her brother, he also has no problem with keeping Viviana locked away from her capital, where she should be negotiating with King Olrik – thus risking a war.

@ clickbait:
Well, there’s much space between “misunderstood nice and good guy” and “horrible antagonist”… for example “ruthless person with good ulterior motives”.
I refuse to belief he’s JUST a villain for the sake of being evil. It’s quite clear he has some goals for which he is training and using his “pet wizards”. And while it is quite a criminal and evil way he treats people, I’d love to see his goals being something good, so we can have an argument about the means to an end he accepted.
Also nothing in the world is black and white (besides pandas)… And while our protagonists are quite definetly a brighter grey, much of our empathy with them origins from us knowing their motives (and accepting them as good enough to act… determined towards them)

@ clickbait:
I never said that he’s a “good guy”. Only that he has a reason to do what he does and that he doesn’t seem to be a villian that does it for the sake of being evil.
So in your opinion Nelson Mandella for example is also a villian, right? Should we go through the lost of other political figures, war heroes, scientists and so on? Oh, and Vivi had just beheaded a guy, while planning to kill two… do we have another villian incoming?

My German is not great, but I seem to recall that the gender of the article (the feminine die, in this case) is not a reliable indication of the biological gender of the subject (e.g. das Mädchen is neuter rather than feminine).

This is a bad example though, because Mädchen is a diminutive, which is always grammatically neutral. I don’t think there are other cases where grammatical gender differs from biological gender (certainly bot male/female).

The fantasy character poll is interesting, because I’m starting my first ever D&D campaign next week. I watched the rest of the party this week. I don’t really get it yet, so a party member is making me a few characters. I dunno what I’ll choose yet; I may just want to have a physical attacker, since everyone else can use magic.

Magic is very powerful though. If everyone else can use it and you cannot you may feel that the actions your character can take are limited. You may want a class that can do some spell casting but doesn’t require it so much. Say ranger or paladin rather than straight fighter.

@ clickbait:
Well, there’s much space between “misunderstood nice and good guy” and “horrible antagonist”… for example “ruthless person with good ulterior motives”.
I refuse to belief he’s JUST a villain for the sake of being evil. It’s quite clear he has some goals for which he is training and using his “pet wizards”. And while it is quite a criminal and evil way he treats people, I’d love to see his goals being something good, so we can have an argument about the means to an end he accepted.

If Eldor turns out to be anything other than Lawful Evil I will be very surprised.
He may well have a greater goal, even a good one, but the way he goes anout achieving it is utterly evil.

I’m starting my first ever D&D campaign next week. I watched the rest of the party this week. I don’t really get it yet, so a party member is making me a few characters. I dunno what I’ll choose yet; I may just want to have a physical attacker, since everyone else can use magic.

Good luck to you. My advice to you is if you wish to just be a physical attacker, then go with it. There is nothing wrong with being a pure fighter. As such, you will always be in the front lines in the thick of things. You also have a much better choice of weapons and armor.

Magic types, even the mixed magic/fighter types, generally only have a limited amount of spell energy available. Use it, and they are limited in their usefulness to the group. So they have to justify the use of each and every spell.

So if you like to do more than think, be a fighter. If you like to think more than do, be a magic user.

MHW wrote:
@ clickbait:
Well, there’s much space between “misunderstood nice and good guy” and “horrible antagonist”… for example “ruthless person with good ulterior motives”.
I refuse to belief he’s JUST a villain for the sake of being evil. It’s quite clear he has some goals for which he is training and using his “pet wizards”. And while it is quite a criminal and evil way he treats people, I’d love to see his goals being something good, so we can have an argument about the means to an end he accepted.

If Eldor turns out to be anything other than Lawful Evil I will be very surprised.
He may well have a greater goal, even a good one, but the way he goes anout achieving it is utterly evil.
I’ll agree that he’s not Evil for Evil’s sake though.

I rather think he’s neutral/evil or even plain neutral. He des not seem to care about any rules. And he is not just doing evil things just for the sake of being evil. He is determined and cares only about his goals.

clickbait wrote:
I rather think he’s neutral/evil or even plain neutral. He des not seem to care about any rules. And he is not just doing evil things just for the sake of being evil. He is determined and cares only about his goals.

Lawful evil isn’t (necessarily) about caring about rules though, it’s more about twisting the rules to your advantage. Making elaborate plans and following those closely (and getting upset if something doesn’t go as planned) are also typically lawful. Evil for the sake of being evil sounds more like chaotic evil to me. Performing evil acts for a good cause isn’t neutral behaviour (turning a blind eye might be though).

Of course casting hings in the D&D alignment system can only ever be tongue in cheek, since the alignment system is a crude tool at best (and an obstacle to role-playing at worst) and this comic isn’t really based on D&D rules anyway. Evenso, if I were to compare Eldor to evil characters in OotS (which does have it’s base in D&D), I’d put him in the same alignment bin as Redcloak or Tarquin. As opposed to Xykon’s loose-cannon psychotic evil-for-evil’s sake persona.